12 entryway designs for a warm welcome
A New York Prewar entryway celebrates the apartment’s Art Deco origins with a front door stripped down to its metal. Design: Time & Place Interiors
The exciting flurry of holiday hosting season is approaching! When house guests bustle in, carrying host(ess) gifts and shareables, their first impression will be through your entrance or foyer.
As the room that sets the tone for the rest of the home, an entryway should never be overlooked. Luckily, this small but important space is an exciting one to design, with its relatively small square footage opening creative opportunities to fuse function with looks.
Beyond greeting house guests during holidays, the entryway serves to welcome you, the homeowner, back to your own personal space, or to comfortably see you off, any day of the year. The transition space should offer a spot to drop your keys and handbag, a nice mirror to check your hair, and (ideally) a side chair or a small side stool to put on your shoes.
Extra touches like a floral arrangement and flattering lighting go a long way to set the foyer design’s welcoming mood, too. Keep clutter to a minimum by introducing only the most essential accessories — perhaps a natural horn tray for keys or a vintage hook rack for hanging jackets.
To get your creativity flowing, I’ve rounded up a selection of twelve inspiring home entryway designs that employ vintage and modern decor to perfection. Each has integrity, whether it’s by celebrating the homeowner’s unique style, sourcing of creative accents, or honoring the history of a home’s original architecture.
Of course, the most important greeting to your merrymaking guests will be your welcoming smile. But a bit of good design in the background doesn’t hurt either!
Use the entryway to show off your design chops to guests. In this historic Manhattan apartment’s foyer, the striking repetition of black & white between the bone inlay console and art print is intriguing. Yet it’s balanced out with the unapologetic patina of a vintage Paul McCobb chair in the foreground.
Design: Carrie Hunt with Povero & Company / Photo: Noe DeWitt
The foyer is a great spot to place statement furniture, especially if it resonates with the home’s story. In this New England farmhouse entryway, the antique bench was found on the property and reupholstered in a stylized floral pattern. The vintage mirror is perfect above it.
Design: Heidi Lachapelle / Photo: Erin Little
To make a foyer design authentic, don’t focus too narrowly on a single style. Instead, try introducing an insouciant touch for one of the decor elements. Take inspiration from this Eames wire chair that sneaks into a traditional Victorian townhouse front hall.
Design: Paul West / Photo courtesy of The Modern House
Indeed, the most tastefully decorated spaces mix modern and traditional styles. Here’s a very different entryway style, also from a Victorian home, where ornate and minimalist effects are juxtaposed with just the right balance.
Design: Krissy O’Shea / Photo: Justine Hand
Creative repurposing of antiques always make for a warm welcome in a foyer design. Here’s a Brooklyn Heights front hall where a family’s heirloom church pew provides a spot to put on shoes. The marble table, with a mini round mirror above, adds to the charm.
Design: Sandeep Salter / Photo: Jonathan Pilkington
You can treat your foyer as another place to show off your art collection, like in this Hamptons home where a contemporary artwork takes center stage, and is complemented by a vintage mirror.
Design: Sandra Weingort / Photo: William Abranowicz
Even if you have limited floor space to work with, the entrance is still a great spot to convey your personality through artworks. Here, a stylist created a mini art gallery in his small entryway, centered around an antique Japanese chest.
Design: Scott Newkirk / Photo: Chris Edwards
With some creativity, you can fashion an entryway even in a home that doesn’t have any dedicated foyer space at all. In this Brooklyn apartment, just a few feet of wall space have been decorated to build a buffer between the front door and the living room.
Design: Casey Kenyon / Photo: Roland Bello
By the way, “limited space” can mean teeny-tiny, where just one or two judicious design decisions are critical. Here’s a cute-as-a-button entryway where a vintage mirror hung artfully off of a peg rail does just the trick to craft a transition from the outdoors.
Design: Allprace / Photo: Jessica Alexander
Of course, if you have a Brooklyn brownstone with gorgeous architectural detailing, all you really need are a sleek contemporary pendant lamp and a vintage rug to complete your foyer design. But, it’s really important to get these selections right to do justice to a historic home.
Design: BarlisWedlick / Photo: Joshua McHugh
Or, if you enjoy a countryside home like this one designed by my colleague Nick Spain, consider brightening up the front hall space with a modern light, a detail on the trim, and unexpected antique accents.
Design: Arthur’s / Photo: Zio and Sons Creative
Welcome good design into your life.
Invest in your space, and you’ll feel both pride in welcoming guests and pleasure each time you return home. To discuss ways you can make your entryway more comfortable for you and exciting for your guests, schedule a free 20-minute information call with Time & Place Interiors founder Ksenya Malina:
